


caution

by pocky_slash



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Character Study, Introspection, Loss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-24
Updated: 2012-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-31 16:04:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/345963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is unprepared to be alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	caution

**Author's Note:**

> Based off a prompt from David Levithan's [Lover's Dictionary](https://twitter.com/#!/loversdiction/status/172701520888995840) twitter feed:  
>  _caution, n.: You are unprepared to be alone._
> 
> Credit also to **momebie** for presenting the prompt and ordering words to be written.

"We're just as alone here as we were in New York," Raven says to him one night. They've been out to the pub, drinking and laughing and trading anecdotes until Charles looked at his watch and made noise about an exam that he fabricated entirely.

"We're not alone," Charles says. "We're just different."

"Yeah, right," Raven says.

"We're not alone," Charles tries again. "We have each other."

"Do we?" Raven asks, and leaves him to his hangover before he can find the meaning of her words beneath the veil of ambiguity and vague cruelty.

***

"What would you have done if I left that night?" 

Charles is watching Erik's hands, large and graceful, spearing the olive at the bottom of his martini with a toothpick and twirling it between his fingers. Erik doesn't drink much on these nights out, but he touches everything and Charles has to drink more to dampen the heat that blooms in his chest as he watches.

"Pardon?" he asks, and the whiskey slides down his throat, a different sort of heat, just enough distraction to focus on Erik's words.

"If I'd left the CIA," Erik says. "Would you be making this trip with Agent Platt? Or perhaps Agent MacTaggert would be preferable."

Charles wrinkles his nose. "I wasn't lying when I told you I didn't want the CIA involved in this part of the process," he says. 

"So you'd have gone alone," Erik says.

"I'd have brought Raven," Charles says. "I wouldn't be alone."

"If you say so," Erik says, and then he runs his fingers over the long scratch in the lacquer of the table and Charles is lost again.

***

"A school," Erik says, indulgent but smiling, and Charles will let him sound however he wants without comment as long as Erik keeps tracing his spine.

"Yes," Charles says. "We're halfway there now."

"We're training children for battle," Erik murmurs. His hand pauses in the next sweep, lingering by Charles' shoulder blade and then dragging his fingertips across Charles' shoulder, up his neck, across his face to rest at his temple, a gentle mimicry of the motion Charles uses to focus his telepathy. "It's hardly the same thing."

"Close enough," Charles says. The mid-afternoon breeze is rustling the curtains, casting shadows across the bed. The sunlight highlights Erik's hair, turns his eyes from grey to green. Sometimes Charles can't look at him. In his dreams, when he thinks he has what he wants, everything fades to sun-bleached white, the glare blinding Charles until he wakes, tangled in the sheets and deeply bereft. He's afraid to look at Erik. He doesn't know that he can bear to lose Erik anymore than he can bear to lose a limb. "We're teaching them. Helping them expand their powers. When this is over, maybe we can help them expand their minds as well."

"You more than me," Erik says. "You're teaching me as much as you're teaching them."

"You're teaching me too," Charles says. "There's more to life than mastery over their abilities. You have so much to offer. I can't imagine doing it alone."

Erik looks away, but he's smiling and Charles has to kiss him. Charles can't stop, really. Charles would live inside Erik if he could, curl up in his mind, burrow into his body. He's never been himself as much as he is when he's with Erik. It's addicting. 

"We should go back downstairs," Erik says. The words curl into the narrow space between their bodies, little more than a whisper. "They'll miss us."

"I'll miss you if you leave," Charles says. He tries for sly, but his words sound soft and true, even to his own ears. He can hear other words inside of them, declarations he hasn't made outside of his mind and Erik's.

"Then I'll stay a bit longer, I suppose," Erik says, and he kisses the response right off of Charles' lips.

***

His dreams don't fade into white; they disappear in burnished metal and a puff of red smoke.

His pain smells like sulphur and salt.

***

"Would you like to be alone?" the boys ask after the doctor excuses himself from the room.

None of them know how to respond when Charles just laughs and laughs.

At least the sheets won't be twisting around his legs any longer, even if that means he'll never be waking up, either.


End file.
